Barack Obama’s Economic “Climate Change”

Conservative critics have long alleged that the Obama administration is systematically hampering our economy through excessive regulation and by creating needless uncertainty. The administration’s sorry record is circumstantial support for this critique, but the Heritage Foundation supplies hard evidence via Presidents of the Federal Reserve Banks. For example, Dennis Lockhart, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, said:

We’ve frequently heard strong comments to the effect of “my company won’t hire a single additional worker until we know what health insurance costs are going to be.”

And Richard Fisher, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, said:

Before the recent mid-term election, most all of my business contacts claimed that taxes, regulatory burdens and the lack of understanding in Washington of what incentivizes private-sector job creation were inhibiting the expansion of their payrolls. They felt stymied by a Congress and an executive branch that have appeared to them to be unaware of, if not outright opposed to, what fires the entrepreneurial spirit. Many felt that opportunities for earning a better and more secure return on investment are larger elsewhere than here at home.

It is a sad day when investors have more confidence in China and Brazil than in the United States, but that is the climate that Barack Obama’s startling economic ignorance has created.